The Hidden Ark
by Doniglo
Summary: There is a door in Hogwarts that is historically rather difficult to relocate. It is a door to many rooms with many uses. Some call it the Come and Go room while others, well...they never leave.


**This will be a slowly updated story, as I do not work ahead before posting. Please be patient, and thoughtful if you review.**

**Prologue:** The Room Of The Soon To Be Forgotten

Dusty motes of particles swirled lazily in the beams of sharp sunlight that illuminated a weathered, but solid school desk. Once upon a time it had sat proudly in a room filled with multitudes of other varnished and keenly polished work spaces. Happily it stood there, in a small class room in the most spindly tower, preforming its one purpose in life with a steadfast resolve that could have outshone the determination of any house elf, even a particularly obsessive one. Scores of children, the desk had held in its tender grasp, firmly supporting their easily tired bodies as they they practiced their charms. It outlasted the sharpest quills and most volatile spills, the heaviest boys and their dangerous toys, warm air and cold air, many humid summers and just as many arid winters it stood, supporting all those who needed it. The attached seat stood erect and the hinges on its top noiselessly swung open a full sixty degrees. Indeed, the desk was very important, and very dedicated. The others though, not so much. They moaned and groaned as they began to falter. 'The children do not appreciate us!' they cried, 'The children, they gouge our faces and bend our hinges' they whined. The house elves did their best to preserve the others but soon, even the professors magic began to fail. The pitying eyes of the desks small caretakers grew with sorrow as more and more desks began to be removed. After a time they all failed, except for one proud desk, due in part to its faithful caretaker.

It was an old elf, even by wizard standards, who took care of the last desks. Hobbled as he was with a lame leg and leathery olive skin with wispy strings of nearly translucent white hair on his grape-like head. How many floors had he swept and meals prepared? How many gardens had he attended and dishes cleaned? Cauldrons scoured and trophies polished? No one knew, not even he. What he did remember though, was his very first job as a young elf. New with promise, he had helped port the desks into the highest classroom in the most spindly tower. One by one he had floated them down the halls and up the sporadic swinging stairs. The desks were mostly similar, sturdy and medium sized. Their grain was simple and varnish poorly spelled, but that was to be expected he tutted in remembrance. Most Wizards were poor at enchanting varnish. The elf was a senior member of the school and, as in any community, greatly respected but, like the desks after many years of service he too began to falter. Walking was laborious and his breathes were full of short dusty wheezes. Even now when he had little energy, the dutiful ancient elf still climbed to the top of the most spindly tower, and dusted the most lonely desk.

Magic is not like electricity, it is not mechanical in its use or consistent in its rules. Some scholars say its organic and pulsing with a life of its own while others say it flows like water, a torrent waiting to be controlled. A wise man may question the morality of magic and a philosopher, ponder its mysterious existence but one easily observable fact of Magic is that it is really rather good at imbuing properties of something onto anything. The desk is one such example.

The old elf had preferred the desk over all the others. It wasn't clear what made it so special at first but after a time it became obvious. The desks musk was powerful, full of woody earth and freshly inked parchment and its grain, was simply aligned in a most pleasing manner. It was a dutiful desk taken care of by a dutiful elf and such amount of dutifulness gathered in a place of magic altered the desk just so. One who sat at the desk found himself found himself more relaxed, knowing that the responsibility of standing was looked after by the chair of the desk, and that he might lay his elbows on the top to write a paper with no fear of being unbalanced. It was a desk that just _worked_.

Being the only elf to look after the only, and very lonely, desk in the most spindly tower there was a fair lapse of time before anyone discovered the old elf slumped upon the desk in his eternal slumber. It was an old desk now, and so from the hands of the dutiful old elf the task of looking after it fell to hands of a much less capable younger and lazier elf. The new caretaker could not see the value in the old desk and quietly, so as to not alert the other elves of his lightened work load, stole the desk down to the Come and Go Room and in the center of the then empty Room of Hidden Things, the desk became the very first permanent and forgotten fixture.

For a long, extensive period of time the desk sadly sat in a room, and even as Hidden Things began to pile in truly massive and bizarre towers around it no one found the need to use the desk again until one day, when a small intelligent Hidden Thing found itself liking the thought of using it once more, albeit in a much different capacity then learning.


End file.
